The Lightness of Doom
by MarthaJones11
Summary: Rey is overcome by darkness as Starkiller Base burns. Something new rises from the ashes.
1. Chapter 1

Around Kylo Ren's cut form, the fires of her people's destruction raged. Knives sliced through Rey, a great disturbance as she saw flashes of unmistakable grief swarm at the corners of her enemy's darkening eyes.

 _He knows, he sees._

Somewhere in the crumbling towers, millions of FN-2187s rushed and screamed and burned and died. They were the unlucky ones, she knew, the Finns incapable of loosening the red scarves at their throats and of being reborn in the sands of Jakku. And they were dying, dying at their hands. At her hands, at trembling fingers that held a lightsaber, and it was then she saw the blood dripping from her tanned skin.

Kylo Ren saw it too.

 _Eyes that have seen, like mine. Eyes that know._

A sweeping gesture, a strangled scream, and he was upon her, slashing with the agony of the knowing. Blows rained down upon her, as she parried with the blade of his ancestors, a hailstorm of something perhaps redemptive, cleansing, a white-hot sear to burn away her sins.

Overhead, nearly imperceptible through the billowing haze of smoke, peered a clear blue highway, cold stars waltzed through wine-soaked galaxies and watched their furious dance with measured eyes. It was something they had seen before and would see again. Beneath their gaze, twin sabers slashed and hacked, nothing beautiful or fluid but passionate, oh, alive like bullet holes in chests and lines of powder at watering holes lost at the bottom of the world. So very alive.

Below, fires blazed around their intertwining bodies. Heat from inside and without powered their footsteps, a dance both away and toward each other's rage, and Rey pondered that the physicality of the flames might be safer than the fury billowing from Kylo Ren's eyes like so many smoke stacks climbing toward the heavens overhead.

 _I will die here, never to touch the sands again._

Things were cracking, _snapping,_ trees falling like leaves from the heat as they crushed the new-fallen snow. All things were lost. A red lightsaber slashed and ripped and drove her footsteps deeper into the forest, a pair of inhuman, wrathful eyes pinned her mind in place. Death, destruction, and Starkiller Base burned beneath a livid sky. Things were being avenged.

 _I am dying here._

A single groan and an explosion of light wrenched Rey's feet from a ground that had become alive. She was one with the smoke, a ghostly child, one floating through the flakes and for a moment, all was peaceful. But as her body slammed into the snow-coated ash of the forest floor, she knew there was nothing else. Her eyes found the dancing stars above before a looming figure stole their brightness from her sight.

 _Take me back to my ancestors._

And the last thing she saw was an immortal gazing at her, triumphant.


	2. Chapter 2

The light slap upon her cheek jars Rey from sleep. She gasps, wrenching hands up in a feeble attempt to fight back, and is dismayed to find her wrists loosely tied down. Not that it matters. Everything is darkness, and as she attempts to blink, she suddenly notices the strip of fabric binding her eyes.

Rey wants to scream but the sound catches in her raw throat. She panics, thrusting all of her dying energy into the bonds. She must see, she must see, they cannot take everything from her. Clenching stomach, hands that burn and rage against their captors, and she feels her wrists start to bleed as she, thrashing, demands freedom with her very body.

A deep voice echoes somewhere beyond, tinged with concern.

 _A god?_

No, Rey thinks, not a god. Gods do not fear. A needle pierces her forearm. Her movements weaken and her body grows heavy and, again, she descends into the land of the in-between.

* * *

"Scavenger."

The words are harsh and grating upon her ears, but they draw her from the purgatory as poison is drawn from a wound. Her mind grasps at something she cannot remember as trees collapse in the snow at the edges of her consciousness. She remains tied, almost gently, to the bed, as though there is no true need or desire to keep her restrained. The thought concerns her more than the loose bonds.

"Where am I?" The words die on her dry and caked tongue.

Suddenly, someone is holding glass to her lips. Water, she thinks. She gulps greedily as the glass is tipped down her throat - and promptly taken away. Rey cringes. She is beholden, reliant on someone else. The feeling guts her to the core, drawing a long line of terrors and abuses from stomach to chest. She steels herself against the darkness, draws herself up to the best of her ability.

"Where am I?" Again, and the words are stronger this time.

 _Good, she thinks._

Silence, silence. Where have you gone, you who drew me from the darkness? She focuses her energy against the darkness, attempting to find the one who speaks. Still, he hides from her, or perhaps he has gone, leaving her alone in the blackness of her own solitude. There could be nothing worse.

Movement to her right. She would flinch, if she had unbound eyes to see. A voice crackles through the darkness, illuminating her mind with a streak of lightening and a searing brightness of the Force.

"It does not matter. Ask the right question."

Her mind flips. The right question? She now knows that the masked Kylo Ren stands beside her - that much is evident, so she need not inquire as the the identity of her captor. And the bonds, those are easy enough to figure out. She remains a captive of the First Order. Where, she assumes, she will not be told. Or rather, it cannot matter at this point. The Resistance is likely unable to find her, wherever the remnants of the First Order have fled follow the destruction of their base.

Her mind halts. The Resistance.

 _Finn._

"Where is Finn?"

The air is aflame beside her. Her captor blazes to life again, mirroring the deadly energy of his saber. Rey realizes she has, again, asked the wrong question.

"He is none of your concern." The voice cracks, sharp, like moonline shattering glass, something meant to be cold and detached that speaks to the depths of her soul. She shudders when movement displaces air at her jawline.

Gloved fingers ghost along her face. She wrenches away, but she is weak, so weak, and Kylo Ren no longer practices mercy or plays the fool. His fingers are now harsh upon her chin, forcing her to gaze, unseeing, upon what she presumes is a faceless mask. Yet she does not need to see - she understands the hatred that flows through the Force and surrounds her very being. There is something else too, she recognizes as the fingers tighten - a dark desire, a protectiveness, a warning. She can scarcely breathe when his voice, a whisper through the darkness, reaches her ears.

"Ask a final question, scavenger." His words are a breath upon her cheek, and she is trapped between his lips and the firm grip upon her jaw. He is unrelenting yet terrified, a solid wall that threatens to crumble if the right brick is removed.

And this makes him feral, all the more dangerous, Rey realizes.

 _No matter, her final question is at hand._

A thousand questions dart across her mind, remnants of her vision, memories of Jakku, thoughts and feelings and screams. How is she to choose only one? But he begs the question of her, demands it, and there is only a single question that will, perhaps, grant her a measure of freedom. What is she missing? What has changed? Everything has changed.

She brings to mind their first meeting. She sees herself bound to the table, a masked Kylo Ren crouching before her.

The air around her crackles to life, yet again. There is something there as Kylo Ren tightens his grip in anticipation, then promptly steps back, granting her some measure of freedom.

"Good," he whispers. "Good. Follow it."

She knows he invades her mind. It matters not. She has neither the strength or the desire to push him away as she meanders through the memory of that encounter.

 _What is she missing?_

Rey does as her captor commands, follows the memory as though a ghost in the shadows of the room. She follows Kylo Ren as he sweeps across, removing his helmet and looming over her. She watches herself, bound, with eyes never leaving the pale face of the young man afront her.

 _Eyes. Her eyes._

She moves to face where she knows Kylo Ren stands, watching her with thinly-veiled anticipation. Rey knows the question she must ask, but the words die deep within as things stream back into her memory, called forth by the man who invades her head. The battle in the snowy wood. The collapse of all things. Starlight overhead. Pain, pain and then, darkness.

She swallows. Thickly, the words drop from her unwilling tongue.

"Why have you covered my eyes?"

The greeting silence is worse than any saber burn. Her ears long for his voice, if only to affirm what her mind already understands. Speak, Kylo Ren, she thinks, speak, and let the words drop like tempered steel from your lips.

When he speaks, finally, the words are clipped. Somewhere, a thing resembling an apology lurks behind that mask - but buried, a thing so deeply hidden that she cannot perceive its beginning.

"You will not see again."

Rey does not react, does not recoil from the words that roll over her like crashing waves of the ocean she will never see. There is nothing left for it. She feels Kylo Ren move and knows what approaches. Silently, she allows herself to slip away into the darkness, a merciful slip into purgatory. And her footsteps are led by Kylo Ren.


End file.
